Year of the Snake
by Mookie 821
Summary: The year is AC200. Life during peacetime is not without its difficulties, and friendships aren't always what they seemed. Het, yaoi, 2x1, 5xS.
1. Prologue New Year's Eve

Title: Year of the Snake - prologue  
Author: Mookie  
Pairings: 5xS, eventual 2x1  
Warnings: het, shounen ai, eventual yaoi  
Notes: This story is based on one of the plot bunnies Sharon had up for adoption once upon a time. No, really. Just wait for it.

* * *

It was a clear night, one that would be perfect for the upcoming fireworks. Fitting for the start of the new year.

AC 200. The bicentennial of the first colony's completion.

Sally Po turned to her companion and studied his profile.

Wufei Chang was the best partner she could have hoped for. He constantly strove to be the best, because nothing less would do. He recognized his own weaknesses, but sought to overcome them rather than lament them.

He'd certainly come a long way from the bitter, self-recriminatory, young boy Sally had met in China five years earlier.

Wufei didn't smile freely, but when he did, he looked his age. It was hard to believe he was only nineteen.

He'd grown. Not so much physically, but definitely emotionally. Intellectually. Even spiritually.

Wufei was not only committed, he put his heart into his work.

They all did. Heero Yuy, who had joined only a year ago. Quatre Winner, who had been with them for two.

The other former pilots she hadn't seen more than a handful of times, but she would bet a year's salary that it was true for them as well.

So very different, these young men, and yet alike in so many ways. She could see herself at their age, her faith in them unwavering despite the odds stacked against them.

Heero had intrigued her from the start.

Wufei, however, Wufei had been a much harder nut to crack. She knew he was aware she was staring, but she couldn't help it.

Three years they'd been partners.

Three years since Relena Darlian had been kidnapped, since she'd become Preventer Water to Noin's Fire.

Four years since her path had crossed that of the young man beside her. She'd known even back then that there was a good man underneath, one with a heart he tried so hard to deny.

She smiled, a sad, nostalgic smile. A smile of gratitude that she had gotten the chance to know him - really know him, in a way she suspected not many had.

"You're not fooling anyone," he finally said, turning to look at her. A lock of hair covered his face, and she reached out to brush it out of his eyes.

He looked so different with his hair down, she mused. Younger, less bound by conventions of his own making.

His eyes watched hers as she tucked the dark strand behind his ear.

To her surprise, his hand covered hers and held it there, her palm cupping his cheek.

"Wufei," she murmured.

He opened his mouth to say something, but the fireworks started going off, the explosions loud, but nothing approaching the sounds of an exploding Aries. It seemed significant somehow.

And then it didn't matter if Sally could hear him or not, because his lips communicated all he'd wanted to say without words.

As the Catherine Wheel lit up the sky, followed by the Battle in the Clouds, neither of them noticed.

Wufei had leaned over and kissed her.

tbc


	2. Ch 1 The Art of Hiding

Title: Year of the Snake - Chapter 1/?  
Pairings: Wufei/Sally, eventual Heero/Duo  
Warnings: het, shounen ai  
Notes: Based on one of Sharon's plot bunnies. Takes place four years post-EW.

Heero threw his jacket carelessly across the back of his chair and sat down heavily, inhaling the coffee he'd poured before setting it down on his desk and booting up his computer.

Quatre had noticed, over the past year, that Heero had a few interesting habits. It was something that either had developed over time, now that the world was, for all intents and purposes, at peace.

He owed Heero a lot - not the least of which was his life. Heero should have killed him four years ago, but he hadn't. At first he'd seemed doggedly determined to do so, and then he'd backed off. When Heero had installed the ZERO system in Sandrock, Quatre had felt like he'd just had his heart torn out of his body. Regret and fear had filled him, but Heero had shown faith in him.

Heero had _believed_ in him.

Quatre still had a hard time reconciling that fact. First the Maganacs had surprised him with their trust, something that he still sometimes wondered about, considering how their first meeting had gone. Then he'd been entrusted with the Gundam.

When Trowa had come out and surrendered to him, though, he'd been overcome. When Duo had agreed to stay with him after Heero's self-destruction, he'd recognized someone who wanted a partnership to work.

Heero, Wufei, and Trowa had confused him on various levels, yet they'd all worked as a team - not always all five of them, together, but they'd had a common goal in mind. Maybe not exactly the same motivations, but they all wanted peace.

As he'd come to learn, the price for such a goal was very high.

He sighed heavily, and got up to pick up the mug of coffee that he knew Heero would not drink, carrying it back to his desk and wrapping both hands around it. Heero loved the smell of fresh coffee, but for some reason he'd given up drinking it. Quatre never had been clear on whether it was the caffeine or coffee itself that Heero was avoiding, but there were many other things he did know about his partner.

He knew that Heero had a small candy dish in the bottom drawer of his desk with chocolate chips in it. He'd seen Heero struggle under the weight of his conscience on more than one occasion, and he'd known before Une that Heero would turn down the chance for a promotion, although he'd been taken by surprise when Heero had recommended the position be offered to Quatre instead.

Quatre didn't want a leadership position. He was here to pay his dues for a crime against humanity, and he was not about to dictate to others what should be done, no matter how much Heero thought he should.

He took a sip and watched Heero's hands fly over the keyboard to enter his password. Quatre couldn't see his face, but he knew Heero's lips were moving. He talked to himself a lot, Heero did, when alone or with those he trusted.

That alone made Quatre want to remain right where he was, as Heero's partner.

The day that Heero had come walking in the building, Quatre had known something very big was going to happen. Heero should have been the very last person Quatre had expected to see walking into the office and throwing his badge onto the desk recently vacated by Quatre's last partner. It hadn't been easy, being an ex-Gundam pilot. It was made more difficult by the fact that people still held a grudge against the Winner family.

The destruction of the colony, however - that was something Quatre would never allow himself to forget.

Heero had invited Quatre out for a drink one night, and they'd sat at the bar nursing glasses of something or other that Heero had ordered but neither of them drank. It should have been uncomfortable, sitting elbow to elbow with Heero and saying not a word, but it had been oddly relaxing.

They'd done it several times before Heero had changed the venue to his apartment.

This time Heero pulled out a bottle from under the kitchen cabinet and twisted the cap to remove the seal. He took a long sip, then extended his arm and offered it to Quatre.

They didn't come close to emptying the bottle, but Quatre had found himself talking about It.

Heero had been there with Trowa when It happened, and had wanted to stop Quatre by force, because it was what he deemed necessary at the time, and not because OZ was calling the shots.

Trowa, who was working undercover for the organization, was the one who talked Quatre through it, before he'd gone silent and Quatre had snapped back to reality, horrified at what he'd done.

It killed him that he had been more bothered by the fact that he'd murdered his friend than by the destruction of an entire colony. Men, women, children - innocents, not soldiers in mobile suits.

Quatre had clasped his hands between his knees and hung his head as he confessed this to Heero, and he remembered like it was yesterday the way it had felt to have Heero sit next to him on the couch and put his arms around him. No words were exchanged, but Quatre knew that Heero understood - Heero empathized, and carried his own guilt. He'd quietly shared a story about a civilian complex, and although the body count was nowhere near comparable, Heero held himself responsible for what was nothing more than an accident.

They'd not spoken about it since then. It had puzzled Quatre, that Heero felt more guilty over that than he had over what happened at New Edwards - and both weighed heavily on Heero's mind, despite the fact that he'd apparently tried to make amends to the victims' families the only way he knew how.

Quatre had no such option. Families of those he'd slain had all lived on that colony - who was left to exact retribution in that case?

Not that it was Quatre's way out. As much as he had in common with Heero, he felt it would be more meaningful to anyone who might have had loved ones on the colony, and to mankind itself, to make amends in a more constructive manner. He wanted to use his family's wealth altruistically, but the choice had been taken from him when fines had been leveled at him by the Earth Sphere United Nations.

Sisters he hadn't even known he'd had had been divided. Many of them were in support of their only brother and youngest sibling, and others felt he'd not only done irreparable damage but had committed an unforgivable sin. Iria was gone, their father was gone - their sudden loss, when Quatre had encountered the ZERO system for the first time, had impaired his judgement. He could still remember how very sure he'd been that the colonies all had to be destroyed.

It had been difficult for Quatre to work with another agent. Trowa would have been Quatre's first choice, if he'd been so inclined, but he'd seemed content with his extended family at the circus. Quatre couldn't say he blamed him, and he didn't try to convince his friend to give up the path he'd chosen once they'd destroyed their Gundams. Quatre had wanted to stay closer to all of them. He thought for sure he, Trowa, and Duo, at least, would have. When they'd all watched their Gundams go up in an explosion of light and sound, there had been what Quatre thought of as A Moment. They'd met through a combination of circumstance and chance, and after having parted ways and then once again adding their efforts to address the Barton Uprising, he was convinced that nothing could keep them apart for long.

He hadn't expected them all to have lunch together once a week or to run into each other periodically at the local supermarket, but he'd at least hoped for some sort of semi-regular contact.

After most of his inheritance had gone to pay for various damages to the Earth Sphere United Nations, court fees, mandatory psychiatric evaluations, and an in-depth investigation of his personal life, he couldn't blame the others for maintaining a low profile.

In a sense, it had made things easier for him as far as his determination to right his wrongs the only way he knew how. With nothing left to focus his efforts on, he threw himself into his work with the Preventers, doing all in his power to insure that all the casualties of the war hadn't died in vain.

He had an endless stream of constantly changing partners. The longest had lasted two months, and that had been because the boy had been a new recruit, one who hadn't known the stigma attached to Quatre's name. That hadn't taken long to correct.

The day Heero had appeared, Quatre had regained some of the hope he'd lost. Heero had always had that effect on him - on all of them, back during the war.

Heero turned around and noticed the slight smile tugging at Quatre's lips. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, then flipped it in his partner's direction. Quatre caught the one-cent piece with one hand and shook his head.

"Just thinking about the day you got your uniform," Quatre said, blowing on the coffee, although it certainly was cool enough by now.

Heero made a snuffing noise through his nose. "You'd think they'd have taken actual measurements," he said derisively.

Quatre laughed. The look on Heero's face had been priceless when the uniform, pressed and in plastic, had been brought up to the office. Heero had carefully taken it off the hanger and pulled the jacket on, then frowned at the cuffs ending two inches below his fingertips.

He had looked like a little boy trying on his father's clothes, and Quatre had found it endearing as much as amusing. He told Heero now the same thing he'd said at the time.

"You have a commanding presence, Heero."

"Perception is helpful in situations involving negotiations," Heero replied, turning back to his computer. "Not tailoring, where accuracy is almost as important as in marksmanship."

Quatre sipped on the coffee, nodding at Heero's back. His fingers drummed the side of the mug idly before he drained the rest of it, set the cup down, and cleared his throat.

"I'm sending you copies of the handwritten receipts," Quatre said. "Let me know if you see anything."

"Roger," Heero said automatically.

They'd been working on tracking down rumors surrounding a black market ring - one that specialized in automatic weapons.

Heero was highly suspect of any sort of paper trail. The black market operated on verbal contracts only, although paper was much easier to destroy than was any sort of electronic signature. Still, there was no telling what leads these receipts might point to until they'd tried to make heads or tails of them.

The writing had been faint and smudged, and in pencil. With some careful darkening of the image, it was as visible as it was going to get without losing the contrast between lettering and the paper background. Heero was in the process of enlarging the image when Wufei Chang rapped twice on the open door and walked in.

Chang and Po had just returned from their reconnaissance of a small town where there had been incidents of rioting and civil unrest. Nothing made Une antsy about another uprising like small factions cropping up here and there.

As an organization dedicated to preventing major outbreaks of violence before they occurred, the Preventers often sent out agents to do some preliminary investigation when reports of this nature filtered through the network. Heero didn't envy Une her position.

What did puzzle him was why Chang seemed so keen on obtaining their input on this case - especially how subtle he was being about it. In all the time Heero had known him - including the last year working in the same agency - Wufei had been nothing but blunt and straightforward.

There was something afoot, but Heero couldn't quite put his finger on it. He turned away from the computer and eyed Wufei beneath the thick fall of hair over his brow.

That was one advantage Trowa had had during the war - the ability to hide his expression behind his hair, although Heero freely admitted that Trowa hadn't needed to quite as much as the rest of them.

Least of all Wufei, whose anger and outrage had always been worn openly. Of all of them, perhaps Wufei needed the art of hiding his feelings more than any of them, even if it wasn't exactly his style.

"You should start wearing your hair down," Heero announced suddenly.

The crash of the coffee cup Quatre had just emptied told him that that remark had apparently hit a sore spot with Wufei.

Heero found that revelation interesting indeed.

tbc


	3. An Innocent Man

Title: Year of the Snake - Chapter 2/?  
Author: Mookie  
Pairings: 5xS, eventual 2x1  
Warnings: het, shounen ai, eventual yaoi  
Notes: Based on one of Sharon's plot bunnies. Takes place four years post-EW.

* * *

****

Chapter 2: An Innocent Man

He woke to the sensation of hair tickling his nose and he moved his head out of the way, only to find more of it teasing at his lips and chin. He opened his eyes and realized that a warm body was lying on his, part of it draped over his chest and pressed against his side.

Wufei blew at the strands of hair beneath his nostrils and removed his hand from Sally's waist to smooth them down and out of the way the best he could without disturbing her.

He closed his eyes again and suppressed a groan. He'd told himself that this wasn't going to happen.

It had started months ago - probably long before that, he supposed, but it wasn't until New Year's Eve that he'd realized that he found his partner attractive on a purely physical level.

Not purely, he corrected himself. Yes, she had a decent figure - trim waist, generous curves hidden beneath her uniform, a mischievous gleam in her eyes that he should have hated.

He'd tolerated her at first, or so he'd tried to believe. She'd placed far too much faith in him from the start, and it had angered him as much as surprised him. She'd made a lot of assumptions about him, ones that he'd resented. How dare she claim to understand him, to make such bold assertions as to the sort of man he was.

He'd known then that her practical side was marred with idealism. He'd seen it firsthand at that shop when she'd embroiled herself in some sort of conflict, only to receive a couple of blows in exchange for her efforts.

He'd come to her aid because he'd known that she'd do something stupid, and he'd been annoyed to find out he'd been right.

She seemed to have a thing for fighting losing battles. He'd known someone with that same defiantly stubborn streak before. A brave fighter, a champion for the underdog, someone who didn't care how seemingly hopeless a fight was, trusting in some sort of divine justice, or at least a miracle, to win the war if not the battle.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He'd swear it was his lot in life to be constantly surrounded by women who lacked the good sense they were born with.

Sally's breath was warm against his collarbone and her lips twitched slightly. Wufei felt her lashes flutter against his skin before she shifted her body, lifting one leg to entwine it with both of his. He inhaled deeply, smelling the scent of her hair, a combination of shampoo and sweat.

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes.

He expected her to say something. A good morning, a comment about the night before, or preferably, an explanation as to how they'd thrown away their good judgement after a couple of drinks that didn't contain so much as a drop of alcohol.

She said nothing, just studied his face. He could feel her eyes sweeping over his brows and his nose, lingering on his lips before moving to his chin and neck. He remembered the way her mouth had traveled along the same path, and he felt a faint twitch of interest below his waist, one that fortunately Sally seemed unaware of. The last thing he wanted to do was continue this foolishness.

They were partners, and he'd grown accustomed to the way she worked. Making more of their relationship than that was a mistake.

Sally slid from the bed, the sheets whispering across her skin as she reached for her shirt. She didn't bother to put her bra on; she merely stuffed it into her pants pocket as soon as she'd zipped them closed. Once she was dressed, she raked both hands through her hair and wrapped a band around it; then she turned and faced him again.

"See you around, Wufei," she said.

He watched her walk out of his bedroom, and strained to hear the door to his apartment open and close. His gaze returned to the ceiling for a few minutes before he threw himself out of bed and headed for the shower.

Fifteen minutes later he was clean and dressed. As he pulled his hair back into a tight ponytail, he avoided meeting his eyes in the mirror.

Breakfast was something he'd pick up on the way to work. He was in no mood to spend any more time in the apartment. There was work to be done, after all.

* * *

To Wufei's surprise, he found Sally standing near the coffeepot, talking to Heero Yuy. He didn't mean to stare at them, but he couldn't help it. Sally was looking much the way she did the first time he'd seen her, the light brown hair in two thick plaits framing her face. He'd found he preferred it that way over the style she'd taken to wearing it in more recently, not the more mature loose ponytail gathered at the nape of her neck but the two straighter looking ones, as if she'd compromised between the two extremes. She looked far too young when she wore her hair in ponytails, too naive and childlike.

This was more acceptable. It reminded him of the woman who'd asked him if he'd be interested in joining the Preventers. That was the agent he wanted as his partner, not the woman that he'd woken up in bed with that morning.

He spared Heero a mere passing glance, noting the fingers wrapped around the mug that he knew featured a smiling cartoon sun on it. Yuy was the last person that Wufei would have picked owning something of that nature. He was sure it had to be Quatre's. He'd seen it on Winner's desk often enough.

He turned and made his way to the office he shared with his partner of nearly four years.

As he turned on his computer and typed in his password, he found his mind wandering back to that first kiss. He still couldn't come up with an explanation for why he'd done it.

He'd had a modicum of grudging respect for the woman in a way that was at odds with his longstanding rivalry with both Treize and Heero. He'd recognized in her a few familiar traits, ones that caused memories long buried to rise. If anything, that alone should have made him fight against the growing attraction with renewed determination.

They'd both worn their hair down that night. Unbound hair, in certain ancient civilizations, was tantamount to wearing a scarlet letter. Women who wore their hair loose were proclaiming their status as sinners or harbingers of chaos.

He'd allowed his hair to grow while he'd been away at boarding school, before he'd been summoned back to wed the heir to the Long clan who'd just reached her fourteenth year. The significance of hair throughout history was not lost on Wufei. His wife had adopted a utilitarian style, without a hint of respect for any of the long standing traditions. Hair, skin, body, and proper maintenance of all of them - these were signs of filial obedience.

She'd looked the part of the respectful bride but once, and the words that had spilled from her mouth had completely torn down any illusions that she would be a docile wife. On one hand, he'd hardly expected anyone from the banished warrior clan to act in a genteel manner, but on the other, he'd expected that she'd set an example by her behavior.

She had, Wufei acknowledged. It had just taken him far too long to realize it.

In the short time he'd been married to her, he'd not once seen her with her hair down, and after she died, he'd kept his own restrained. He'd never really given it a thought as to why. It had certainly been practical.

Seeing Sally with her hair streaming down her back, and the smile on her face as she noticed his brushing against his shoulders, had left him feeling vulnerable in a way that not even Treize's blade at his neck had done.

It had been the moment when Sally's fingers ran through the hair that had fallen in front of his face when he'd felt it. Even now he wasn't sure what it was, only that it had been overwhelming and that he'd needed to prolong it as long as possible.

That's when he'd made the first mistake.

He'd been both relieved and disappointed that it had been a chaste kiss. She'd smiled warmly at him, and then her fingers had laced through his for just a moment and no longer.

Wufei could still picture the way the exploding lights overhead illuminated her face before he, too, tilted his face toward the night sky to watch the finale.

He'd avoided giving it any more thought until that reconnaissance mission. They'd been holed up in that seedy apartment as a cover for over a week. Seven days and eight nights should have been nothing. Listening to her breathing as she slept when it was his turn to stay on watch, however, had seemed far more intimate than he'd expected. He'd never felt that way when he'd lain in a prison cell with another person. Not with Heero, nor with Duo.

Upon their return they'd gone straight to the office, and Wufei had still been typing up a preliminary report for Une when Sally returned from the women's showers. Her hair was still wet and tousled, obviously from a brisk toweling, and she'd stood in the door of their office and asked him if he wanted to grab something to eat. The almost imperceptible slur in her voice had indicated just how very tired she was.

He hadn't planned on saying yes, but then his stomach had growled in protest, and he'd realized that neither of them had eaten yet that day.

He should have followed Sally's example and taken his shower there instead of going home first. When he'd come out of the bathroom wearing a clean T-shirt and a pair of pants, he'd found her dozing off on his couch with one of his books in her lap.

The lights from the neon sign outside the hotel down the street streamed through the window, and he'd been reminded of New Year's Eve.

The night passed with neither of them getting anything to eat, and Sally was still there when he'd woken up that morning.

It was an entirely unacceptable situation.

Wufei wanted to talk about it with Sally, but this was neither the time nor the place. Personal business should not be mixed with work, and they both should have remembered that last night.

When she finally joined him and set her coffee cup on the desk next to her telephone, he'd grunted a good morning to her. He then spent the next ten minutes watching the metamorphism of a wire framed solid from sphere to cube to cylinder on his screen saver before deciding that the results of Yuy's and Winner's investigation might be related to the reports of civil unrest that he and Sally had followed.

It had nothing to do with wanting to avoid his partner.

He knocked on the door of the office next door and walked in, heading for Quatre's desk and making useless small talk before hinting that he might be interested in what they'd come up with so far. He cringed internally at the sound of his own voice as he attempted to disguise the other, more shameful, reason he was here.

Quatre drained the last of his coffee and turned the screen to show Wufei a scanned copy of a handwritten scrap of paper. He set the mug next to the mouse pad and began explaining that they weren't optimistic that they'd find anything concrete, but that they couldn't leave any stone unturned, especially not when they had nothing else to go on at present.

Then Yuy said something that brought the events that had been plaguing Wufei to the forefront of his mind, and he turned abruptly to stare at Heero. In doing so, his elbow hit the handle on Quatre's mug.

Wufei would have sworn that the grinning sun was mocking him as it fell.

* * *

A couple of quick swipes of the dust broom and attention was back on the enlarged receipt on Heero's screen, where he used the cursor to further zoom in on the lower left hand corner.

"It's been erased," Quatre murmured, squinting at the gray blur on the screen.

Heero nodded, frowning thoughtfully. His thumbnail toyed with his upper lip as he stared unblinkingly at the monitor.

"Did you expect to find something?" Wufei asked.

"No." Heero did not sound pleased.

Quatre turned and leaned against Heero's desk, folding his arms across his chest and bowing his head. The fingers of his right hand drummed against his upper arm as he spoke. "You suspect this is all just a little too convenient." It was a statement of fact.

Wufei looked from one to the other. The two of them spoke far too often in riddles. It wasn't that he couldn't decipher what they were saying, it was just a wasted effort when the same thing could be accomplished without all the hints and innuendo.

His brows furrowed as he recognized the glint in Heero's eyes. He'd long been driven to prove to Heero that the Wing pilot couldn't possibly know all the answers, and in response, Heero had taken his Gundam for a scuba dive. Just when Wufei thought he'd recognized the heart of a fighter in Heero, he'd turn around and act in ways that no real warrior should.

Wufei had found that to true about all of his comrades. If he were completely honest with himself, before he'd taken control of Nataku, the most he'd known of warriors was what he'd read in books and seen in the news. Of all the fights he'd participated in, none of them had been life or death. Not until the one that had made him swear to prove himself a worthy husband. The one that had made him, not a man, but a widower.

Not for the first time, he found himself wondering what it had been like for the Long clan, to be driven from their home in China and exiled to a broken-down colony. It hadn't taken long for OZ to arrive in an attempt to finish the job that the leaders of the old country had hoped to accomplish through banishment. They'd obviously not counted on the hardiness of the clan.

Was it because they were Longs, rumored to have been the most powerful on the continent, or because they were too stubborn to die, much like Heero?

Wufei ended their silent brooding by stating the obvious. "The receipts are a dead end."

The sound of Heero's chair creaking forward brought Quatre's head up. Wufei saw the two of them exchange a look, and then Heero smiled, the same sort of expression Wufei had once seen on his face in battle.

Heero's fingers were typing on the keyboard rapidly, and Quatre's face was stonily determined.

"Dead men tell no tales," Winner stated as Heero pulled up a list of agents missing in action.

Wufei's eyes widened. "Especially if you don't know they're dead," he said.

"Or," Heero said, rolling his chair out of the way and pointing to the screen. "If _they_ don't even know they're dead."

Wufei stared at the screen. There, in the middle of the as-yet-unreleased list of agents killed in action, was his partner's name.

tbc


End file.
